There is an Alehouse- James Bayliff (Westmorland) 1909 Gilchrist
[My Title- replacing Gilchrist's generic Brisk Young Sailor title. Gilchirst's first stanza with melody at George Butterworth Manuscript Collection (GB/12/7). This song was learned about 1849 by the informant, James Bayliff, when he was 10. Tune is Dorian Mode, she gives details of tunes in her notes. From: Songs of Love and Country Life by Lucy E. Broadwood, Cecil J. Sharp, Frank Kidson, Clive Carey and A. G. Gilchrist; Journal of the Folk-Song Society, Vol. 5, No. 19 (Jun., 1915), pp. 174-203. Published by: English Folk Dance + Song Society
Linda and Susan Adams added the "brisk Young Sailor first verse and sang this song as A Brisk Young Sailor on the 2001 Fellside anthology Voices in Harmony. Notice that Bayliff's first and second stanzas are nearly the same.
Gilchrist's notes follow.
R. Matteson 2017]
Mr. Bayliff learnt this song from an older fellow-workman while an apprentice at Burton-in-Kendal. I noted the tune to the "ale-house" verse, this being the first to be recalled to his memory. The beautiful old tune appears to me to be of Scottish origin- or at least northern- and to have been originally in a gapped minor mode, without the sixth degree. But greatly modernized forms-like the second version here given-are also found, in Lancashire, Yorkshire, and Westmorland- mostly in the major mode, but showing AEolian influence. (Cf. Mr. Bayliff's Dorian tune also with a triple-time variant noted in Lincolnshire, Journal, Vol. iii, p. 188, and English Traditional Songs and Carols.)
There is an Alehouse- sung by a 70 year old carpenter, Mr. James Bayliff of Bardon, Westmorland in June, 1909. He learned it about 60 years earlier when he was 10. Collected and noted by Anne Gilchrist.
1. There is an ale-house in the town,
Where my love goes and sits him down,
And pulls another young girl on his knee,
And isn't that a grief to me?
2 There is an ale-house in the town
Where my love goes and sits him down,
And pulls a strange girl all on his knee-
And isn't that a grief to me ?
3 A grief to me, I'll tell you why,
Because she has more gowld than I;
But the gowld it'll waste and the beauty blast,
And she'll come a poor girl like me at last.
4 I wish my baby it was born,
Set smiling on its nurse's knee.
And I myself was in my grave
And the green grass growing over me.
5 I wish, I wish-- but it's all in vain-
I wish I was a maid again;
But a maid again I never must be
Till an apple grows on an orange-tree.